The painter and his model

Description of the artwork

The delicate small oil on panel presented here belongs to the final years of Eva Gonzalès’s career and testifies to her interest in scenes captured spontaneously, in a spirit closely aligned with Impressionist practice.

Executed in Dieppe, probably between 1880 and 1882, it relates in subject to another small study now preserved in the Prince’s Palace of Monaco. The work depicts Henri Guérard, the artist’s husband, alongside Jeanne Gonzalès, Eva’s sister, who remained a constant support to him and whom he would marry in 1889, six years after the artist’s premature death.

The composition, tightly framed, shows Guérard seated before his motif, holding a portable paint box—an emblematic accessory of plein-air painting. Beside him, the young woman reclines naturally in the grass, her body stretched out with ease, her gaze directed toward the surrounding landscape. The absence of theatrical staging and the simplicity of the poses lend the scene an immediate sincerity, almost intimate in character.

Here Eva Gonzalès adopts a free and vibrant brushwork. Rapid, visible strokes break up the pictorial surface and convey the fleeting variations of light across the grass and fabrics. The palette, dominated by bluish greys and soft greens, envelops the figures in a gentle, slightly veiled atmosphere in which the landscape—far from serving as a mere backdrop—fully participates in the unity of the composition. Through this economy of means and spontaneity of gesture, Eva Gonzalès captures with remarkable sensitivity the quiet poetry of an intimate moment, elevating this familiar scene into a delicate evocation of artistic creation in the open air, resolutely Impressionist and modern.

These qualities seem to confirm the praise expressed by Edmond Bazire at the time of the posthumous sale of her works in 1885:

“She learned frankness of expression, a love of air and movement, and the sincere interpretation of atmosphere, reflections, and shadows […]. The life that animates her work, the atmosphere in which it breathes, the transparencies and perspectives—that is Manet.”²

Fig. 1: Édouard Manet, Eva Gonzalès, 1870, oil on canvas (191.1 × 133.4 cm), Dublin, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art; London, National Gallery (inv. NG3259).

¹ Jacques de Mons, Marie-Caroline Sainsaulieu, Eva Gonzalès, 1849–1883: Étude critique et Catalogue raisonné, Paris, Éditions Bibliothèque des Arts, 1990, cat. no. 118, p. 254.

² Edmond Bazire, preface to the catalogue Tableaux, pastels, aquarelles par Eva Gonzalès, sale of 20 February 1885, Hôtel Drouot, Me Robert Le Sueur, auctioneer, M. F. Jacob, expert, with the assistance of M. Durand-Ruel, cat., p. 9.

Origin

Probably Henri-Charles Guérard (1846–1897), Paris.
Probably Jean-Raymond Guérard (1883–1953), Paris.
Private collection, Saint Rémy-lès-Chevreuse, then by descent (after 1981)
Private collection, by descent since 2023.

Literature

Included in the Eva Gonzalès Digital Catalogue Raisonné of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute under WPI reference number EGEACD
WPI Certificate of Authenticity No. 5659